Digital cameras come with lots of bells and whistles. But what matters most is picture quality, and it has improved significantly in the newest pixel takers.

Instead of striking unexposed film, light entering a typical digital camera is focused onto a charge-coupled device, or CCD. This semiconductor array, consisting of many tiny picture elements (pixels), converts light energy into electron charge. A microprocessor reads the charge in each pixel as a digital signal and constructs an image of the scene.

This article was originally published with the title Take My Pixel.

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